During the short time I've spent in Scandinavia
I've noticed a few interesting things:

Almost anyone you talk to
speaks English, many really well, yet they don't use it as their
first language.

English signs are few and far between. Plaques
on monuments occasionally have English on them, but that is usually
just a summary of what is written in the native language. For example,
there is often the equivalent of a page or two written in the native
language (Danish, Swedish, etc.) and only a paragraph in English.

McDonald's, 7 Eleven, and Burger King are all very popular here.
In Copenhagen there was a McDonald's and 7 Eleven on almost every block.
Here in Stockholm it's not that bad, but they are here.

Starbucks is no where to be found.

It will be interesting to see if this continues in Norway, which is
where I'm headed tomorrow.

Today I just spent more time exploring the city center on foot, but
before we get to that here is a picture I took last night at about
1:15am. Yup, it still wasn't completely dark out and I image it stayed that
way all night because I was awake briefly at 4:00am and it was full day
light.

Just an interesting water fountain in the center of the city.

An interesting old car with the Royal Palace in the background.

These two obelisks are a bit unique. The wavy lines are
present on all sides and they light up based on the air and water pollution
in the city. The one on the left is for air pollution and the one
on the right for water pollution. The lighting of each side reflects
a different pollution measurement and the amount of pollution is
reflected in how the line is lit up (eg longer for more pollution).

This is a replica of a XIII century merchant sailing ship of
the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia. It is being sailed around the
medieval trade sea routes around Europe to learn about how
such vessels where sailed and the effects they had on their crew.
This is the 3rd and final year of their experiment. I just did
a quick search and found their web site
(http://www.ayasclub.com/).
It says it was supposed to by a 2 years and not 3 as indicated on
the English documentation by the ship. I guess there web site is
out of date, like many of them out there.

This is one of many restored old boats docked around the
Kastellholmen Island. Most of them had plaques
describing their history, but only a few had English on them
and as mentioned above it was just a summary.

This old restored boat appears to be a home.

These guys were making some old fashioned hand built kayaks.

That's Stockholm's amusement park.

Those big ships sail between Stockholm and Helsinki on a regular
basis.

This photo was taken on the south end of Kastellholmen Island. I'm
not sure what the bunker is all about as there were no signs of any sort.

This is a better shot of the Kastellet castle shown in the
picture above. It's not a very big place.

There were several of these contraptions in the area near
the museum of modern art and they all
had many moving parts but served no useful purpose.

Time warp.

One of the guards at the Royal Palace.

These folks were demonstrating against the US. They must have picked
today because it's the 4th of July. They started with a small parade
earlier in the day downtown near the fountain shown above. There were many
police officers around just in case anything got out of hand during
the parade.

None of there signs or material were in English, but here's
one sign us English speaking folks can understand. Glad I was carrying
my Canada flag and not one from the US.

It is interesting how so many large churches in so many European
cities have been crowded out by nearby development. As such, many like this
one are very difficult to photograph. It would have been interesting
to see these places back in their glory days when there was space
around them to really see them.

Just what every real peddle biker needs, a toilet paper holder modelled
after the front forks of a bike.

As mentioned above, I'm off to Norway tomorrow. I'm heading to Olso
to do a one day train/boat/bus tour on Thursday to the Atlantic coast
through about 300 miles of what is supposed to be some of the most
scenic terrain in Europe, Norway's mountains and Fjords. I couldn't find any
accommodations at the far end, Bergen, so a couple
hours after we get there I will be getting on an overnight train for the ride
back to Oslo.